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Stuff We Hope Our Favorite TV Shows Fix Next Season

Most of my time is spent gushing over what I love in TV shows, but that doesn't mean nothing ever gets under my skin. As we gear up for the season finales of New Girl and The Mindy Project, I'm engaging in the cleansing process of venting on all of it. There's always next season, and this is what I hope our favorite shows use it for. I say all of this with love, shows. At least you know I'm watching.

Dear The Good Wife, You are practically perfect. But with Will gone, we need to see some true growth from the men on the show. I'm less concerned with Alicia getting a new love interest than I am with, say, David Lee conjuring an original thought. His pat evil-doing borders on Disney antihero these days. Eli needs something new, and big, to do. And I thought I saw hints of Cary going dark places after Will's death. Don't let that slip away.

Dear New Girl,I once called you the new Friends. And I think it's clear now that you could use some pages out of their playbook. The gang gets too hung up on playing en masse at places they wouldn't be in real life (seriously, everyone's going to the middle-school dance?). We need more outside love interests, more concrete life-progressing activities, more plots that mix and match the cast members (Damon Wayans Jr. is full-time as of yesterday.) You can stop short of a coffee shop with an orange couch, but it's time to shake things up.

Dear The Bachelor (and The Bachelorette), For the love of God, finally nail the diversity thing. I don't care how you do it, but I can't watch one more straight white guy push himself out of a pool.

Dear The Mindy Project, I am begging you for more women. I understand that the structure of the show has gelled. Maybe Mindy Lahiri will never have a series-regular female BFF. But even a few eps a year that put her in the context of her girlfriends—or an office cohort fleshed out on the level of Adam Pally—would be great.

Dear Mixology, Here, take this cash and this bus ticket. Leave town, and never return. I hate you, but I am curiously powerless to stop watching you. I need you to meet me halfway here.

Dear Girls, Commit to the Iowa thing. Look, this grad program Hannah got into has an acceptance rate of, like, .001 percent. It's not going to play well if her stay there turns out to be a 15-minute device proving she really can't be away from Adam. I want to see this bold move backed up.

Dear Nashville, For the love of God, get a hold of yourself. You have passed "soap opera" and "telenovela" and are approaching "first script written by (recently dumped) high-schooler." Juliette and Jeff? A reality show within the show? This is beneath even Connie Britton's split ends, do you hear me? Figure it out.

Dear Scandal, I could go on about how nervous I am that the show, which used to include fascinating procedural cases, is about to collapse into a mash-up of monologues and face-licking. But I'm reasonable, so can I just make one request? Stop styling Kerry Washington with stick-straight hair on one side and a giant '70s barrel-curl flip on the other. It's giving me vertigo.